Acrobat for Legal Professionals

This item will only be of interest to IT folks, so if you don’t work for a large law firm and have "IT" in your title, you can stop reading now.

One feature of the Acrobat and Reader X family is support for Microsoft System Center Update Publisher (SCUP).

This tool is used along with Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) and allows IT adminstrators to more easily deploy Acrobat and Reader installs and updates without complicated scripting.

If your organization . . .

• Uses SCCM
• Wants to move from Reader 9 to Reader X

 . . . then the new Adobe SCUP Transition Catalog for Adobe Reader may be of interest to you.

Currently in beta, this tool allows you to use SCCM to easily update Adobe Reader 9 that is currently deployed in your organization to Reader X.

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Large law firms with more than fifty Acrobat users should take advantage of Adobe’s free deployment tools for Acrobat X. Many firms are upgrading to Acrobat X at this time, so I thought I would share a few tips which are specific for the legal industry.

Packaging Adobe Reader or Acrobat for your end-users isn’t difficult, but sometimes IT folks don’t know all of the settings or best practices.

In this article, I’ll discuss:

• Where to download the Enterprise version of Adobe Reader and get your corporate licenses of Acrobat
• How to download Adobe’s free customization tools
• Recommended deployment settings
  • Customization Wizard settings
  • Registry Key Settings

This article will walk you through the settings I recommend using the Acrobat X Customization Wizard.

The information is not intended as a replacement for the numerous documents Adobe makes available to enterprise IT administrators. Here are a few you should check out:

Acrobat Enterprise Administration Page

This page is the starting point for everything you need to deploy Acrobat X.
http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/837/cpsid_83709.html

Enterprise Administration Guide

This 118-page guide is the main documentation for deploying Acrobat and covers AIP, SCCM/SCUP, GPO, bootstrapper, Citrix and other deployment options.
http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/837/cpsid_83709/attachments/Acrobat_Enterprise_Administration.pdf

Administrator’s Information Manager (AIM)

This auto-updating and customizable AIR application containing content of interest to enterprise administrators responsible for configuring and deploying the Acrobat family of products. In addition to links to most admin-centric content and libraries, AIM contains the Preference Reference, a dictionary of registry level preferences containing over 300 keys. The application is updated on a monthly basis.
http://learn.adobe.com/wiki/download/attachments/46432650/AIM.air?version=1

Enterprise Administration Guide

This 118-page guide is the main documentation for deploying Acrobat and covers AIP, SCCM/SCUP, GPO, bootstrapper, Citrix and other deployment options.
http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/837/cpsid_83709/attachments/Acrobat_Enterprise_Administration.pdf

Training Videos for the Acrobat Customization Wizard

Adobe Technical Evangelist Joel Geraci offers videos on using the Customization Wizard.
http://tv.adobe.com/show/it-matters-with-joel-geraci-season-2-acrobat-x

Rick Borstein’s Acrobat X Deployment eSeminar Recording

http://seminars.adobe.acrobat.com/p54652297/

SCUP Catalogs for Acrobat X and Reader X

SCCM/SCUP are Microsoft’s latest change and configuration management solution that replaces older methodologies such as SMS and GPO. Unlike these older technologies, CM provides features such as metering, asset intelligence, inventorying, and improved remote client administration.
http://armmf.adobe.com/arm-manifests/win/SCUP/Acrobat10_Catalog.cab
http://armmf.adobe.com/arm-manifests/win/SCUP/Reader10_Catalog.cab

Acrobat IT Matters Blog

Adobe Acrobat Technical Evangelist Joel Geraci’s IT blog.
http://blogs.adobe.com/pdfitmatters/

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Acrobat integration with Document Management Systems (DMS) is a key requirement of large law firms.

Unfortunately, many firms have been frustrated getting Acrobat to work with their DMS.

While the DMS vendors generally supply Acrobat integration, there are issues which affect customer deployment:

• Integration for the latest version of Acrobat may not be available until a new release of the DMS becomes available, which could take many months.
• Support for newer versions of Acrobat running on legend (older) versions of DMS software is seldom available.

Acrobat integration—while expected by large firms—isn’t a revenue generating activity for DMS vendors.

I shared this customer issue with Thaddeus Bouchard, the CTO of Omtool. Omtool offers AccuRoute, a document routing solution which I see at many large firms. This company has lots of expertise in DMS integration because AccuRoute works with just about every DMS available.

When Thaddeus said, “Hey, maybe we can work together on this problem . . .” I knew something good could happen!

Sometime before the end of October 2007, Omtool will offer a free download of the Swiftwriter plug-in for Acrobat.

Swiftwriter offers integration with the following DMS products:

• Interwoven/iManage FileSite/Desksite (versions 5.x through 8.2)
• OpenText/Hummingbird DOCSOpen (3.9.6 through 4.0)
• OpenText/Hummingbird DM5 through DM6
• World Software Worlddox GX
• Microsoft SharePoint 2003 and 2007

Read on to learn more about the Swiftwriter plug-in and some background information that you may find helpful.

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Adobe Acrobat 8 poses new opportunities—and some new challenges—for the IT staff of large organizations which need to deploy Acrobat to many users.

Adobe offers a new, completely re-written installation tool called the Adobe Customization Wizard for Acrobat 8.0. This tool allows you to create a Windows Installer Transform file (.MST) to modify Microsoft Installer files (.MSI).

On March 9, 2007, Adobe announced that we are discontinuing the Adobe License Manager . I consider this a win for customers!

This article covers two issues:

• I’ve already deployed Acrobat with ALM or I need non-ALM licenses to install. What do I do?
• How do I customize the installation of Adobe Acrobat?

I’ve included several links throughout this article which offer a deeper dive.

For the record, I’m not a deployment expert, so I cannot respond to technical questions about this topic.

Read on to learn more about common deployment questions…

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